Great Circle: A novel [B0227]

2021 HCDJ with minor wear. Man Booker Prize Finalist. The unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost: an "epic trip-through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood-and you'll relish every minute" (People).

After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles. A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.

From recent mixed Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Long and rich, I loved the parallel timelines. Complex interwoven characters over a century.";  "I like the concept of the story, but its a lot more verbose then it needs to be."; "Highly recommend! I loved this book. So well written, so much truth of human frailty and endurance in the pages. The character & story development, heartache, and truth, unknown, interwoven stories of past and present as well as historical info about female pilot's made for an engaging read."; "Amazing book. Loved following all the characters' journeys throughout the Great Recession, prohibition, the war. All the passions."; "I'm a historical fiction girly, but this was hard. The back and forth between storylines, the 100000000 characters . . it all was a little too much."; "If you can keep track of all the plots and people and names and places blended together in both the past present and future, you will be treated with mind boggling connections and characters and stories."